not just about israel, but to me, the most significant foreign policy challenge for president obama and our country and the world in the next year or two is iran and it's nuclear weapons program. chuck hagel has had some very outlying votes on that. he's been -- >> he wants to establish communication. >> he's been consistently -- i think in that sense anybody who tries to communicate with iran has run into a brick wall, and chuck hagel has consistently been against economic sanctions to try to change the behavior of the islamic regime, the radical regime in tehran, which is the only way to do it short of war. so, in fact, as i look at chuck hagel's positions on iran, they seem to me to be quite different than president obama. now, president obama obviously has earned the right to naum night whoever he wants. i think this is a very tough confirmation process. i don't know how it would end, but there are reasonable questions to ask and that chuck hagel has to answer. >> finally in our last minute i need you to solve the fiscal cliff problem. specifically we all know that the speaker left.